GLOBAL ASSET SHOOTING FOR DRUG ABS

In what promises to be a further casting of the ABS net, Global Asset Capital said it is currently engaged in structuring a credit facility secured by royalty revenues on a well known new drug.

While declining to provide specifics, Rana Mookherjee, one of Global Asset's officers, said the securitization will be $25 million to $30 million in size and have a term of approximately seven-years, which would conform to the patent protected life cycle of the drug.

Andrew Winer, a former member of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette's commercial-mortgage group who recently joined Global Asset, said the beneficiary of the securitization will be a small pharmaceutical company that played a role in developing the drug and thereby earned a royalty stream rather than the actual "big-name" drug company that is branding and marketing the medicine. He expects the private placement of this credit to be completed in the fall.

Separately, Global Asset said it is working on a $100 million asset securitization for Kanas Telecom, an Alaska-based company that operates a fiber-optic communications network. Collateral will be the annual payments the company received from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System for providing communications facilities along its network.

The fully amortizing transaction will have a 14-year term and will be privately placed with John Hancock Mutual Life, according to Mookherjee. It will be a hybrid between project financing and a securitization, he added.

The transaction is reported to be in the documentation phase and will probably be completed in a few months. The issue will be unrated.

Lowell Humphrey, an official at Kanas said his company was founded in November 1998 as the union of three Alaska native corporations and operates a network that stretches from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez and ultimately to Anchorage. - David Feldheim

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